Leftist <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/media" target="_blank" rel="noopener">media</a> outlet <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/vox" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Vox</a> announced <a href="http://dailywire.com/topic/unemployment" target="_blank" rel="noopener">layoffs</a> that will impact 7% of employees as other <a href="http://dailywire.com/topic/business" target="_blank" rel="noopener">companies</a> in the sector implement similar measures.
Vox CEO Jim Bankoff said in a <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/01/20/vox-media-layoffs-january-2023?utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=editorial" target="_blank" rel="noopener">note</a> to staff members obtained by Axios that several teams across the company’s revenue, editorial, and operations departments will be impacted by the dismissals. The company, which executed two less severe layoffs last year, currently employs some 1,900 people, indicating that roughly 130 could lose their jobs.
&#8220;Unfortunately, in this economic climate, we’re not able to sustain projects and areas of the business that have not performed as anticipated, are less core to where we see the biggest opportunities in the coming years, or where we don’t have enough rationale to support ongoing investment in what could be a prolonged downturn,&#8221; Bankoff said.
The Vox Media Union announced that some of its members were affected by the dismissals. “We&#8217;re furious at the way the company has approached these layoffs, and are currently discussing how to best serve those who just lost their jobs,” the group <a href="https://twitter.com/vox_union/status/1616462053782294534" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> on social media.
The News Guild of New York <a href="https://twitter.com/nyguild/status/1616509067664719872" target="_blank" rel="noopener">added</a> that layoffs related to the “poor economic climate” never mention “bloated executive salaries or millions spent on stock buybacks,” remarking that the layoffs at Vox and other outlets undermine “the essential work of their employees.”
Bankoff said in the note that the company does not expect further layoffs, but will “keep a tight control on expenses and consider implementing other cost savings measures as needed.”
The layoffs follow other reductions in headcount from leading companies in the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/entertainment-giants-and-media-companies-announce-massive-layoffs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">media and entertainment</a> industry. CNN CEO Christ Licht <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/01/media/cnn-layoffs/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">initiated</a> hundreds of dismissals last month and ended live programming on cable channel HLN. In a memo to employees, Licht <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cnn-chief-lets-go-of-hundreds-of-employees-at-company-guts-sister-network-hln-reports" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> that the goal of the strategic review that led to the dismissals was to “better align our people, processes and resources with our future priorities, strengthen our ability to deliver on CNN’s core journalistic mission and enable us to innovate in the years ahead.”
Washington Post CEO Fred Ryan likewise <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-washington-post-staffers-irate-after-layoffs-announced-ceo-balks-as-grievance-session-unfolds" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> employees at a recent town hall meeting that the outlet cannot “keep spending on initiatives that no longer align with readers’ interests.” Viral footage from the event showed several employees complaining about the job losses, prompting Ryan to add that he would not allow the meeting to devolve into a “grievance session.”
The outlet could increase overall headcount in the near future as the company shifts resources toward new verticals; The Washington Post Guild nevertheless <a href="https://twitter.com/PostGuild/status/1602773561353146376" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lambasted</a> Ryan for dismissing features and magazine employees without offering them “jobs elsewhere in the newsroom.”
Layoffs at prominent legacy media outlets also come as companies in the technology sector dismiss thousands of employees. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-white-house-brushed-off-concerns-about-mass-firings-at-microsoft-and-amazon-now-google-is-laying-off-employees-too" target="_blank" rel="noopener">revealed</a> their intentions to reduce headcount by a combined 40,000 workers over the past few weeks.
Reporters asked White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre earlier this week about the layoffs and whether they present a bad omen for overall economic growth. “I don’t have a comment on specific moves announced by particular companies,” she responded. “As you know, we’re very careful from here talking about private companies. But more broadly speaking, layoffs remain near record lows according to job openings data.”

Vox Media Now

Left-Wing Media Outlet Vox Announces Mass Layoffs, Union ‘Furious’

Left-Wing Media Outlet Vox Announces Mass Layoffs

Business

Jobs

Media

Unemployment

Vox writer Ian Millhiser slammed late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg&#8217;s &#8220;arrogance&#8221; and called on sitting Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to consider retiring rather than risk the possibility of an unfavorable Senate makeup later.
&#8220;Sotomayor and Kagan need to think about retiring,&#8221; the <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23507944/supreme-court-sonia-sotomayor-elena-kagan-ruth-bader-ginsburg-retire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">headline read</a>, and the sub-headline added the reason for his deep concern. The Senate, he alleged, was a &#8220;fundamentally broken institution&#8221; — and for that reason, Democratic justices needed to plan accordingly.
&#8220;We have now lived with the consequences of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s late-life arrogance for more than two years,&#8221; Millhiser wrote to open the piece, and then he went on to detail why he believed Ginsburg should have retired while former President Barack Obama was still in the White House and had a friendly Senate.
The problem he outlined — at least as far as Sotomayor, 68, and Kagan, 62, are concerned — was that Democrats could very well lose the Senate in two years&#8217; time, and he worried that it would be a long time before the <a href="https://reason.com/volokh/2022/12/21/should-justices-sotomayor-and-kagan-retire/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">balance of power</a> shifted in their favor again.
But then Millhiser got to the crux of the matter, revealing that his real problem was not actually the &#8220;so brutal&#8221; Senate map expected in 2024 — rather, he took issue with the Senate&#8217;s designated role as it was written into the U.S. Constitution: to balance the power of the states with the power of the people.
Calling the Senate &#8220;<a href="https://dailywire.com/news/democrats-are-going-about-house-and-senate-popular-ashe-schow/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">malapportioned</a>,&#8221; he argued that the Constitution gave &#8220;extra representation to Republicans in small states&#8221; — and that was the real reason that Democrats were unlikely to regain the majority (according to his math) until 2030 or even later.
&#8220;If Sotomayor and Kagan do not retire within the next two years, in other words, they could doom the entire country to live under a 7–2 or even an 8–1 Court controlled by an increasingly radicalized Republican Party’s appointees,&#8221; Millhiser complained.
Slate&#8217;s Mark Joseph Stern agreed with Millhiser, saying, &#8220;I think Sotomayor and Kagan are brilliant justices and I’d be sad to see them go. But Ian is indisputably correct about the political calculus here. After 2025, Democrats may not hold the White House and the Senate for a decade+. This argument should be taken seriously.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
I think Sotomayor and Kagan are brilliant justices and I’d be sad to see them go. But Ian is indisputably correct about the political calculus here. After 2025, Democrats may not hold the White House and the Senate for a decade+. This argument should be taken seriously. <a href="https://t.co/VU0vQWPCxa">https://t.co/VU0vQWPCxa</a>
&mdash; Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) <a href="https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1605654255678984209?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 21, 2022</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
And while a fair number of Democrats agreed with his assessment, some also pointed out the fact that Ginsburg had been older and her health had not been as good when she opted to remain on the bench. The late justice had also <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-ginsburg/u-s-justice-ginsburg-hits-back-at-liberals-who-want-her-to-retire-idUSKBN0G12V020140801" target="_blank" rel="noopener">made it clear</a> that she would not bow to popular opinion when it came to calls for her retirement, saying, &#8220;So tell me who the president could have nominated this spring that you would rather see on the court than me?&#8221;

U.S. Supreme Court Women Justices Are Honored On Capitol Hill For Women’s History Month

Vox Writer Slams RBG ‘Arrogance,’ Says Kagan And Sotomayor Should Take One For The Team And Retire

Vox Writer Slams 'Arrogant' RBG, Says Kagan And Sotomayor Should Retire

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Sonia Sotomayor

Supreme Court

U.S.

The left-leaning website Vox looked at the explosion of anti-Semitic assaults during the Israel-Gaza conflict and came away with no definitive explanation whatsoever, but hints that blame may lie with followers of former President Donald Trump.
Vox writer Zack Beauchamp, who is Jewish, has noted that “anti-Semitic incidents, ranging from harassment to vandalism to assault, increased by 75 percent during the recent” Israel-Gaza conflict. Despite overheated rhetoric pouring out of certain members of Congress and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tiktok-intifada-videos-of-violent-mobs-attacking-jews-sweep-the-internet">video footage</a> that unambiguously shows roving bands of assailants waving the Palestinian flag as they target Jewish diners, Vox concludes that it’s positively perplexed about why hate crimes rose during that time.
“Violent anti-Semitism spiked in America during the Israel-Hamas war. And we don’t know why,” says the <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/6/2/22455622/anti-semitism-israel-gaza-hamas-new-york-los-angeles-2021">article</a>’s subheadline.
Authors often do not write their headlines but, in this case, it accurately reflects the content of Beauchamp’s argument.
He begins by acknowledging the undeniable uptick in violence during Israel’s conflict with the terrorist group Hamas.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recorded that anti-Semitic attacks in the United States surged 75% during the Israel-Gaza conflict. An accompanying graphic of overall “anti-Semitic incidents” shows that such events more than doubled between April 26 and May 23. ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said that spike was “more drastic and frankly, more dangerous” than during previous Middle Eastern tensions.
But Beauchamp muddies the waters, writing, “What’s less clear is why these incidents are happening.”
“It’s entirely possible that it’s random chance,” he claims.
Beauchamp begins by trying to Fisk the data, asserting that a “well-known problem with the ADL’s data” is its “expansive definition” of anti-Semitism, which <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/finally-france-defines-anti-zionism-form-anti-josh-hammer?amp">includes anti-Zionism</a>.
He cites an <a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/a-closer-look-at-the-uptick-in-antisemitism/">article</a> by  Mari Cohen in the left-wing Jewish Currents, which blithely shrugs away many of the 193 reports of anti-Semitic incidents the ADL received in the week that hostilities broke out — an increase of one-third in just seven days.
“Eight entries are cases of vandalism with no explicit connection to Israel/Palestine (like swastikas drawn on a synagogue or building, one of the most common types of incident reported by the ADL),” Cohen wrote.
But these are precisely the sorts of charges leveled against Israel during its retaliation against Hamas’ attack on Jewish civilians.
MSNBC aired “pro-Palestinian” rhetoric which closely echoed former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard <a href="https://davidduke.com/jewish-supremacism/">David Duke</a>. MSNBC host Joy Reid sat silently as foreign policy academic Rula Jebreal — whom she introduced as “my friend” — said that “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/msnbc-guest-jewish-supremacy-caused-israeli-gaza-conflict">Jewish supremacy</a> is the main goal of Israel [sic] apartheid government.” (Duke wrote a book titled <a href="https://archive.org/details/JewishSupremacism_203">Jewish Supremacism</a>.)
Both public and private sector condemnations of Israel’s war of self-defense grew so grim that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/adl-reports-75-surge-in-anti-semitic-attacks-calls-on-biden-administration-to-act">four Democratic congressmen</a> wrote a letter to “reject comments from Members of Congress accusing Israel of being an ‘apartheid state’ and committing ‘act[s] of terrorism.’ These statements are antisemitic at their core and contribute to a climate that is hostile to many Jews.”
Rather than draw attention to the incendiary rhetoric of Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others, Vox says the Palestinian beatings of random Jews may be the fault of … President Donald Trump.
Beauchamp writes that the beatings could be “a reflection of an upswing in anti-Semitism that began during the Trump campaign and presidency. There is little doubt that anti-Semitic sentiment in America began spiking in 2016 … most commonly linked to the alt-right’s rise on Trump’s coattails.”
The FBI’s <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/ucr/publications#Hate-Crime%20Statistics">hate crimes statistics</a> show that the number of anti-Jewish attacks have risen since 2016 — returning to the equally high rates of such crimes in the years following 9/11.
Beauchamp also holds out the possibility that America is “becoming more like Europe, where anti-Semitic violence during military conflicts involving Israel routinely rises,” particularly in areas with large Muslim populations. But he says this is “not likely.”
Vox, which has a problematic <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-vox-lies-about-israel-again">history</a> of jaundiced Middle Eastern coverage, concludes, “It’s far from clear which, if any, of the three explanations presented above will turn out to be the correct one.”
The article’s conclusion seemed so ludicrous that Ben Domenech hosted a segment about it on Thursday’s episode of “Fox News Primetime.”
His guest, Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL), noted that her district “holds the second-largest Jewish community in the United States.”
“We have an immense problem in this country with this democratic socialism that some people within the Democratic Party are peddling to our youth,” she said.
“When you say ‘socialism,’ you’re talking about anti-Semitism in the same phrase, even though it may not be mentioned,” she continued. She added that in Marxist societies like Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea, “everybody [who] is a socialist or a communist is anti-Jew[ish].”
Some of history’s worst anti-Semitism took place in Marxist nations, which springs from the secularist philosophy of its founder. Karl Marx, who was ethnically Jewish, spread common anti-Semitic tropes in his monograph “<a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/">On the Jewish Question</a>”:
<blockquote>What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.
Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time.</blockquote>
Instead of considering this legacy of socialism, past and present, the media savaged Congresswoman Salazar.
Beauchamp posted on social media that he was incensed that “two non-Jews in this Fox segment … think they understand anti-Semitism better than I do,” claiming that they “did not appear to actually read the article.”
“You think you can mock my work on anti-Semitism that addresses the very point you claim it doesn&#8217;t?” Beauchamp <a href="//7B2C267B-7017-439A-BE5A-4CC28F5BD7FF/added">added</a>. “I expect an apology.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Hey <a href="https://twitter.com/bdomenech?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@bdomenech</a>: virtually my entire family was wiped out in the Holocaust. I&#39;ve been harassed in real life for being Jewish.
And you think you can mock my work on anti-Semitism that addresses the very point you claim it doesn&#39;t? In the *first three grafs*?
I expect an apology. <a href="https://t.co/4qUmQIf4ZP">pic.twitter.com/4qUmQIf4ZP</a>
&mdash; Zack Beauchamp (@zackbeauchamp) <a href="https://twitter.com/zackbeauchamp/status/1400802716721500161?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 4, 2021</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The problem is not that Domenech and Salazar had the temerity to critique Beauchamp’s work. The problem is that he seemed so focused on absolving members of the House’s democratic socialist caucus of their role in emotionally inciting the people, elevating the severity of the situation on the ground, and flooding left-wing media with hateful tropes activated against peaceful Jewish Americans by enraged mobs.
For that, Beauchamp and Vox owe their readers an apology.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Donald Trump

Palestinians Beating U.S. Jews Could Be Trump’s Fault, According To Vox

Anti-Semitism

Less than 24 hours after Harper’s Magazine published an <a href="https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/">open letter</a> defending free speech and condemning Cancel Culture, two of the dozens upon dozens of academics, writers, and artists who originally signed the letter have distanced themselves from it, and one has apologized.
“I did not know who else had signed that letter,” said Jennifer Finney Boylan, an author and op-ed writer for The New York Times, who then suggested it was unclear that the letter was addressing Cancel Culture. “I thought I was endorsing a well meaning, if vague, message against internet shaming.”
“I did know Chomsky, Steinem, and Atwood were in, and I thought, good company,” said Boylan, referring to three left-wing public figures — Professor Noam Chomsky, feminist author Gloria Steinem, and “Handmaid’s Tale” author Margaret Atwood — who also signed the open letter. “The consequences are mine to bear. I am so sorry.”
The open letter, whose signers include author J.K. Rowling, jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, and several NYT opinion columnists, among over a hundred others, casts the present time as a “moment of trial” for the nation’s cultural institutions.
“Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity,” the open letter reads. “As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion – which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.”
Rowling, one of the letter’s most high-profile signees, has since accused Boylan of caving to the mob, and insufficiently so at that: “You’re still following me, Jennifer. Be sure to publicly repent of your association with Goody Rowling before unfollowing and volunteer to operate the ducking stool next time, as penance.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
You’re still following me, Jennifer. Be sure to publicly repent of your association with Goody Rowling before unfollowing and volunteer to operate the ducking stool next time, as penance. <a href="https://t.co/SgjGDt1dcF">https://t.co/SgjGDt1dcF</a>
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) <a href="https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1280834668552769536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 8, 2020</a></blockquote>
New Yorker staff writer Malcom Gladwell, another signee, also responded to Boylan, observing that he “signed the Harpers letter because there were lots of people who also signed the Harpers letter whose views I disagreed with.”
“I thought that was the point of the Harpers letter,” he added.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
I signed the Harpers letter because there were lots of people who also signed the Harpers letter whose views I disagreed with. I thought that was the point of the Harpers letter. <a href="https://t.co/ozFsAmXq9R">https://t.co/ozFsAmXq9R</a>
— Malcolm Gladwell (@Gladwell) <a href="https://twitter.com/Gladwell/status/1280853862916648960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 8, 2020</a></blockquote>
After denouncing President Donald Trump and “the forces of illiberalism,” the letter transitions to an ardent defense of the marketplace of ideas, and later highlights examples of “disproportionate punishments” for allegations of either real or perceived wrongdoings.
“We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters,” said the open letter, which later adds, “But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.&#8221;
The open letter concludes: “We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.”
Historian Kerri Greenidge, whose name appeared on the original version of the letter, said on Twitter after the letter was published: “I do not endorse this @Harpers letter. I am in contact with Harper’s about a retraction.”
A spokesperson for Harper’s Magazine told The Daily Wire in an email that Greenidge’s name was included “because she read the letter and agreed to be included among the signers,” but that the magazine has since removed her name from the letter out of respect for her change of heart.
Greenidge did not respond to The Daily Wire’s request for comment.
After the Harper’s Magazine letter was published, Vox critic-at-large Emily VanDerWerff sent a letter to the Vox editors expressing concern that a colleague’s “signature being on the letter makes me feel less safe” at the company.
VanDerWerff maintained that the colleague “should not be reprimanded or fired or even asked to submit an apology. Doing any of the above would only solidify, in his own mind, the idea that he is being martyred for his beliefs. But I do want to make clear that those beliefs cost him nothing.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
I sent a version of this to the editors of Vox. (I have redacted some bits that are internal to Vox and shouldn’t be aired publicly.) <a href="https://t.co/splNNSMivd">pic.twitter.com/splNNSMivd</a>
— Emily VanDerWerff (@emilyvdw) <a href="https://twitter.com/emilyvdw/status/1280580388495097856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 7, 2020</a></blockquote>
The writer, Matthew Yglesias, declined to comment about the situation to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/arts/harpers-letter.html">The New York Times,</a> but did express admiration for VanDerWerff’s professional work and still “respect[s] her enormously.”

“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald” UK Premiere – Red Carpet Arrivals

JK Rowling, Over 100 Others Sign Letter Condemning Cancel Culture. One Caves, Apologizes. Rowling Responds.

Cancel Culture

JK Rowling

During Thursday’s White House coronavirus press briefing, Aaron Rupar, associate editor for politics and policy at Vox, sent out the following tweet:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Trump begins the April 23 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TrumpPressBriefing?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TrumpPressBriefing</a> by claiming that he&#8217;s spoken with unnamed &#8220;numerous&#8221; world leaders over the past two days and &#8220;they are saying we are leading the way&#8221; in the coronavirus response. (The US has the most cases and the most deaths.) <a href="https://t.co/Emnyk8XelX">pic.twitter.com/Emnyk8XelX</a>
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) <a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1253441497237803015?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 23, 202</a></blockquote>
As of publication, Rupar’s tweet has 4,700 “likes” and has been retweeted approximately 1,500 times.
At first glance, this may seem like a simple partisan reading of President Trump’s remarks, but something much more insidious is happening here.
First, Rupar is leaving out a significant portion of the president’s quote about “leading the way,” and inserting his own words. Second, he is juxtaposing that decontextualized quote against data seemingly suggesting that the coronavirus response in the United States is lacking because the U.S. has the “most cases and the most deaths.”
Here’s President Trump’s actual quote in full:
<blockquote>You see states are starting to open up now, and it’s very exciting to see. I think it&#8217;s very awe inspiring. We&#8217;re coming out of it, and we&#8217;re coming out of it well, and we&#8217;re really – I’m very happy, the governors really have been doing a really good job working with us, and it&#8217;s really pretty impressive to see. I&#8217;ve spoken to numerous leaders of countries over the last 48 hours, and they are saying we’re leading the way, we&#8217;re really leading the way in so many different ways.</blockquote>
<iframe loading="lazy" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nH_9Tz-IoVc?start=819" width="720" height="385" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Trump first speaks about the states that are beginning to loosen their lockdown restrictions, and he commends various governors for their cooperation with the administration. This leads to the president mentioning that in his talks with foreign leaders, it has been expressed to him that the United States is “leading the way in so many different ways.”
The president doesn’t elaborate on the phrase “leading the way in so many different ways,” but it stands to reason that the plural nature of the remark indicates that these leaders are not simply speaking about case totals and death tolls. It’s possible that they are praising the cooperation between state and federal governments during the reopening process. That is indeed what the president was making note of just prior to mentioning the world leaders. It’s also possible that the conversations pertained to another aspect of the pandemic entirely.
Additionally, the data set used by Rupar is misleading.
According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) <a href="https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6">Global Cases map</a>, the United States does indeed have the most cases and the most deaths overall (though it must be noted that China’s numbers are under a great deal of suspicion). However, the United States is also one of the largest single countries afflicted with COVID-19 on a population bases.
When broken down by cases-per-million, the United States actually ranks 8th, according to the <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/coronavirus/">RealClearPolitics COVID-19 case tracker</a>. Luxembourg, Spain, Belgium, Ireland, Switzerland, Italy, and Qatar all come before the U.S. in cases-per-million.
The United States ranks even lower when looking at COVID-19 deaths-per-million, ranking 10th, below Belgium, Spain, Italy, France, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and Ireland.
As for case fatality, the United States ranks 35th as of publication, below other first-world nations such as France, the U.K., Italy, Sweden, Netherlands, and Spain. It should be noted that the case fatality rate is an ever-evolving number that won’t be fully understood until long after the pandemic is over.
When a journalist removes vital context from a quote and uses a data set designed to complement the narrative they have created with that decontextualized quote, they are either unintentionally allowing their biases to guide them, or they are deliberately misleading their followers.
The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">subscriber</a>.

Twitter

Dissecting Vox Journalist’s Wildly Misleading Tweet About Trump Admin COVID-19 Response

COVID

The oh-so-very conscientious Middle East historians at Vox, who once landed themselves in hot water barely three months after website launch with the <a href="https://freebeacon.com/blog/in-praise-of-vox-media-max-fisher-and-zack-beauchamp/">dissemination of laughable fake news</a> about a purported <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2014/07/17/voxs-motto-should-be-explaining-the-news-incorrectly-repeatedly/">land bridge</a> connecting the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-israel-must-destroy-hamas-once-and-all-josh-hammer">Hamas</a>-controlled Gaza Strip with the biblical Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria (i.e., the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-yes-palestinian-state-far-more-dangerous-josh-hammer">&#8220;West Bank&#8221;</a>), are apparently <a href="https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2019/12/24/rashida-tlaib-would-no-doubt-be-very-pleased-with-voxs-inexcusably-dishonest-reporting-on-israel-and-israeli-jews/">up to it again</a>.
As highlighted by <a href="https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2019/12/24/rashida-tlaib-would-no-doubt-be-very-pleased-with-voxs-inexcusably-dishonest-reporting-on-israel-and-israeli-jews/">Twitchy</a>, Vox has written a piece about the post-Oslo Accords modern history of the city of Bethlehem that is, in the words of one venerable pro-Israel Twitter user, &#8220;<a href="https://twitter.com/AG_Conservative/status/1209497608122703872">inexcusably dishonest</a>.&#8221; And it is.
Seven years following 1993&#8217;s <a href="https://honestreporting.com/the-second-intifada-israeli-society-terrorized/">fateful</a> signing of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_I_Accord">Oslo I</a> between the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the late Palestinian-Arab unrepentant jihadist Yasser Arafat, Vox informs its readers, &#8220;tourism in Bethlehem &#8230; took a nosedive when the Israeli military invaded many of the West Bank’s major cities that were under Palestinian jurisdiction.&#8221; Vox continues: &#8220;As a political stalemate and expanding Israeli settlements led to the bloody Second Intifada, or uprising, the devastation and Israeli curfews kept tourists away; hotels closed and restaurants went out of business.&#8221;
This is not merely historical revisionism or tendentious distortion. It is an outright lie.
In reality, it was the terrorist Arafat who was singularly responsible for commencing the bloody Second Intifada — a four-plus-year sustained jihad during which over a thousand Israelis paid the ultimate price and thousands more were also wounded.
Although Arafat strategically waited to launch the Second Intifada until after then-Likud party prime minister candidate Ariel Sharon had the oh-so-shocking temerity to visit the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, in September 2000, it is now commonly known that Arafat had been planning the civilizational jihad at least since he rejected then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak&#8217;s <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/bill-clinton-palestinians-were-offered-temple-mount-in-2000/">exceedingly generous</a> &#8220;two-state solution&#8221; offer (96% of Judea and Samaria) at the U.S.-hosted Camp David Summit two months prior. The U.S. government&#8217;s own <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-mitchell-report-may-2001">Mitchell Report</a> on the subject, overseen by former Sen. George Mitchell (D-ME), made this quite clear (emphasis added):
<blockquote>&#8230; [T]he immediate catalyst for the violence was the breakdown of the Camp David negotiations on July 25, 2000 and the &#8220;widespread appreciation in the international community of Palestinian responsibility for the impasse.&#8221; In this view, Palestinian violence was planned by the PA leadership, and was aimed at &#8220;provoking and incurring Palestinian casualties as a means of regaining the diplomatic initiative.&#8221; &#8230; The Sharon visit [to the Temple Mount] did not cause the &#8220;[Second] Intifada.&#8221;</blockquote>
Lest there be any doubt as to which party was to blame for the negotiation breakdown at Camp David in 2000, furthermore, let us defer to then-U.S. President <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/may/23/israel3">Bill Clinton</a>: &#8220;[Arafat] did not negotiate in good faith; indeed, he did not negotiate at all. He just kept saying no to every offer, never making any counterproposals of his own.&#8221;
In short, the unrepentant terrorist Arafat deliberately tanked the Camp David negotiations and used his own destruction of the possibility for a sustained peace as an excuse for launching a years-long bloody jihad to murder as many Israeli Jews as possible. Contra Vox&#8217;s despicable lying, all subsequent Israel Defense Forces (IDF) incursions into Palestinian-Arab strongholds in Judea and Samaria were in direct response to Arafat&#8217;s preplanned war. In short, it was Arafat&#8217;s deliberately beginning to kill Israeli civilians en masse that prompted the IDF&#8217;s military response.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Vox apparently wants readers to think Israel invaded Bethlehem out of nowhere, and suggests the second intifada *followed* the invasion. 
Of course, that &quot;uprising&quot;—ie the murdering of Israeli civilians in cafes, buses, and markets—prompted the invasion of West Bank cities. <a href="https://t.co/lkMCaEvUho">pic.twitter.com/lkMCaEvUho</a>
&mdash; Gilead Ini (@GileadIni) <a href="https://twitter.com/GileadIni/status/1209496422778900480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 24, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The Second Intifada was a uniquely harrowing time to live in Israel. Here is how Matti Friedman, who lived in Israel during part of the jihad, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/09/opinion/israel-election-netanyahu.html">described</a> it at The New York Times in September:
<blockquote>No single episode has shaped Israel’s population and politics like the wave of suicide bombings perpetrated by Palestinians in the first years of the 21st century. Much of what you see here in 2019 is the aftermath of that time, and every election since has been held in its shadow. The attacks, which killed hundreds of Israeli civilians, ended hopes for a negotiated peace and destroyed the left, which was in power when the wave began. Any sympathy that the Israeli majority had toward Palestinians evaporated. &#8230;
I remember standing at a bus stop when I heard a suicide bomber blow himself up and murder 11 people one street over, at Café Moment. My mother passed through the Nahariya train station right before a suicide bomber struck there, and my sister was in a cafeteria at the Hebrew University campus when Palestinians blew up a different cafeteria. I’ve got many more memories like that, all of them standard for the time.</blockquote>
There are a <a href="https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2019/12/24/rashida-tlaib-would-no-doubt-be-very-pleased-with-voxs-inexcusably-dishonest-reporting-on-israel-and-israeli-jews/">myriad other problems</a> with Vox&#8217;s duplicitous holiday season smear job about Israel and Bethlehem. But outright lying about how the Second Intifada started — in contravention of the U.S. government&#8217;s own review of the facts, no less — stands atop the sordid list of Vox&#8217;s falsehoods.
Of course, what else might we expect from the folks who once claimed Israel restricted Palestinian-Arab &#8220;traffic&#8221; on a &#8220;land bridge&#8221; connecting Gaza to Judea and Samaria? &#8220;Fake news&#8221; is very, very real.

Israeli flag Old City Jerusalem

HAMMER: Vox Lies About Israel. AGAIN.

Bill Clinton

Fake News

Foreign Policy

Israel

Israel Defense Forces (IDF)

Judaism

Media Bias

Middle East

Murder

Left-wing outlet Vox supported California&#8217;s controversial new law targeting &#8220;gig&#8221; workers — including contractors who work for ride share companies and freelance writers — arguing that those sounding the alarm over the law fail to understand how it&#8217;s really going to &#8220;protect&#8221; independent contractors. With the law going into effect in January, Vox Media has just informed hundreds of its freelancers that they&#8217;ve been cut. Out of the hundreds, only about 20 will potentially get a part-time or full-time job with the company.
In October, about a month after California&#8217;s Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5) was passed, Vox&#8217;s Alexia Fernández Campbell defended the law by insisting to the outlet&#8217;s readers and freelancers that &#8220;<a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/10/21/20924781/freelance-journalists-writers-ab-5-california">the alternative to AB 5 would be worse</a>&#8220;:
<blockquote>
The law, which goes into effect in January, makes it much harder for companies to label workers as independent contractors (a.k.a. freelancers) instead of employees, a common practice that has allowed businesses to skirt state and federal labor laws.
Hundreds of thousands of independent contractors in California, ranging from Uber and Amazon drivers to manicurists and exotic dancers, will likely become employees under AB 5. So would many freelance journalists who do four or more assignments each month for one news outlet.
</blockquote>
But, as many journalists, particularly on the right, have predicted, that&#8217;s not what is actually happening. Rather than &#8220;many&#8221; of these contractors becoming employees, as Vox insisted, a vast majority are simply losing their gigs — just like hundreds of writers for Vox Media&#8217;s SB Nation learned on Monday.
In a &#8220;bittersweet&#8221; announcement posted on SB Nation on Monday equivocally titled &#8220;<a href="https://www.sbnation.com/2019/12/16/21024100/thank-you-california">Thank You, California</a>,&#8221; SB Nation&#8217;s executive director John Ness informed the over 200 independent contractors for the outlet working in California that they won&#8217;t have a job with them next year because of SB 5:
<blockquote>
This is a bittersweet note of thanks to our California independent contractors. In 2019, SB Nation contractors who live in California or contribute to California’s team sites did some truly amazing work: They ran 25 different communities, with all of the sites’ managers pulling together their own unique recipe for smart coverage. Contractors ran social media through the nerve-racking ups and downs of gametime and moderated our sprawling communities. Together, over 200 people on California sites wrote thousands of blog posts in 2019 – pieces so diverse in their conception that it’s impossible to describe them en masse except to say, they were written for a community of fellow fans. This is how things have run for our California blogs since 2003, when Tyler Bleszinski launched Athletics Nation.
Now comes the bittersweet part: In 2020, we will move California’s team blogs from our established system with hundreds of contractors to a new one run by a team of new SB Nation employees. In the early weeks and months of 2020, we will end our contracts with most contractors at California brands. This shift is part of a business and staffing strategy that we have been exploring over the past two years, but one that is also necessary in light of <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB5">California’s new independent contractor law</a>, which goes into effect January 1, 2020. That new law makes it impossible for us to continue with our current California team site structure because it restricts contractors from producing more than 35 written content “submissions” per year. To comply with this new law, we will not be replacing California contractors with contractors from other states.
</blockquote>
Ness goes on to encourage the more than 200 axed contractors to apply for SB Nation&#8217;s &#8220;newly-created full-time or part-time employee positions.&#8221; But there&#8217;s one big problem. As reported by<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/16/vox-media-to-cut-hundreds-of-freelance-jobs-ahead-of-californias-ab5.html"> CNBC</a>, SB Nation is only creating about 20 of those positions.
AB 5 &#8220;has the potential to change the employment status of more than 1 million workers in California,&#8221; CNBC notes, while Uber, Lyft and DoorDash have &#8220;pledged $90 million on a ballot initiative for the 2020 election that would exempt them&#8221; from the bill.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sb-nation-writers-lose-jobs-because-of-new-california-law-democrat-behind-law-says-its-not-all-bad-gets-smacked-apologizes">Democrat Behind Law That Just Got Hundreds Of Writers Fired Says It’s ‘Not All Bad,’ Gets Smacked, Apologizes</a>

Welcome to California

California’s New Law That Vox Supported Just Cost Hundreds Of Vox Writers Their Jobs

California

On Monday, President Donald Trump signed legislation to ensure financial support to first responders and their families via the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, which will now remain solvent through 2092. The legislation had wide bipartisan support and the president&#8217;s comments were well received by those in attendance at the White House Rose Garden.
But Vox reporter Aaron Rupar was quick to turn the unifying moment partisan by explicitly lying about Trump&#8217;s comments.
&#8220;Trump suggests that he was a 9/11 First Responder,&#8221; Rupar captioned a video of the president.
The video, however, does not reflect the caption. Here&#8217;s what Trump actually said (emphasis added): &#8220;Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. And I was down there also, but I&#8217;m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there. I spent a lot of time there with you.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none">Trump suggests that he was a 9/11 First Responder <a href="https://t.co/cFnVkV3wru">pic.twitter.com/cFnVkV3wru</a>
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) <a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1155845434482548736?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 29, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Rupar was quickly called out. The New York Post&#8217;s Joe Levine, for example, posted: &#8220;Trump: &#8216;I&#8217;m not considering myself a first responder&#8217; Vox: &#8216;Trump suggests that he was a 9/11 first responder.'&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Trump: &#8220;I&#8217;m not considering myself a first responder&#8221;
Vox: &#8220;Trump suggests that he was a 9/11 first responder&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/YrefngX1KO">https://t.co/YrefngX1KO</a>
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) <a href="https://twitter.com/LevineJonathan/status/1155928110203719680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 29, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Journalist Tim Pool wrote, &#8220;I mean, he literally says the opposite of what you tweeted &#8220;and I was down there also, but I&#8217;m not considering myself a first responder.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">I mean, he literally says the opposite of what you tweeted
&#8220;and I was down there also, but I&#8217;m not considering myself a first responder.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/79wHvv72D6">https://t.co/79wHvv72D6</a>
— Tim Pool (@Timcast) <a href="https://twitter.com/Timcast/status/1155882734629376000?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 29, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
&#8220;Another &#8216;Journalist&#8217; at Vox,&#8221; host Dave Rubin mocked, adding, &#8220;(Watch the 13 second video, it’s quite literally the reverse of what Trump says.)&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Another “Journalist” at Vox.
(Watch the 13 second video, it’s quite literally the reverse of what Trump says.) <a href="https://t.co/KHiyK2T4F4">https://t.co/KHiyK2T4F4</a>
— Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) <a href="https://twitter.com/RubinReport/status/1155897927128084480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 29, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Rupar omitted his false caption from his write-up on the president&#8217;s &#8220;incredibly gauche&#8221; comments, instead focusing on Trump&#8217;s apparent role in post-9/11 rescue and rebuilding efforts.
&#8220;[D]uring brief remarks before the ceremonial signing, Trump suggested, without evidence, that he was &#8216;down there&#8217; at ground zero in New York City with first responders in the days after the attack on the World Trade Center,&#8221; <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/29/8934904/trump-9-11-first-responders-event">said</a> Rupar.
Trump has said that he helped &#8220;a little&#8221; in the days following the attack and with the rebuilding process. Left-wing fact-checking site Snopes gave an &#8220;<a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-searching-911-survivors/">unproven</a>&#8221; rating to the claim: &#8220;Donald Trump and hundreds of his workers helped search the rubble for survivors after the September 11 terrorist attacks in Lower Manhattan.&#8221; Though the site did establish that a photo of Trump used in a popular meme was taken at Ground Zero seven days following the attack.
&#8220;The <a href="https://www.vcf.gov/genProgramInfo.html">Victim Compensation Fund</a> was initially created in the aftermath of the al-Qaeda operated terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, which killed nearly 3,000 Americans and injured more than 6,000 more,&#8221; The Daily Wire’s Molly Prince <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50013/watch-trump-gives-emotional-speech-signing-911-molly-prince">reported</a> on Monday. &#8220;The fund compensates individuals who suffered physical harm as a result of the attacks. It grants financial support for those who lost loved ones as a result of the attacks, as well as providing pensions for those suffering from illnesses that stem from exposure to toxic debris in the attacks&#8217; aftermath.&#8221;
&#8220;The first responders from across the country rushed to New York and worked endless days and sleepless nights. They fought to rescue every person trapped in the rubble, and then searched for months to find the remains of the fallen,&#8221; Trump praised 9/11 heroes before signing the legislation.
&#8220;The love and loyalty of our 9/11 responders knew no bounds. Today, we are deeply honored to be in the presence of more than 60 of these exceptional heroes. They answered terror with the emotional strength of true American warriors,&#8221; he said, adding, &#8220;You inspire all of humanity.&#8221;

Vox Reporter Called Out For Posting Express Lie About Trump’s 9/11 Comments

A Vox writer exposed their lack of knowledge of anything not relating to a city on Tuesday after taking a swipe at President Donald Trump while he addressed a crowd in Iowa.
At one point Trump began speaking about access to broadband, and explained how his administration has helped rural communities.
&#8220;We secured nearly $1.2 billion to expand rural broadband, which you need very badly. You need very badly,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;They have not treated the West well with broadband, with anything having to do with the word &#8216;computer.&#8217; I look at some of those tractors and they don&#8217;t even hook up.&#8221;
This quote was used to mock Trump, but ended up saying more about the Vox writer than it did about Trump.
&#8220;Beyond parody &#8212; Fox Business cuts away from Trump&#8217;s speech right after he laments, bizarrely, that tractors can&#8217;t hook up to the internet,&#8221; wrote Aaron Rupar, an associate editor at Vox.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Beyond parody &#8212; Fox Business cuts away from Trump&#8217;s speech right after he laments, bizarrely, that tractors can&#8217;t hook up to the internet <a href="https://t.co/hbYoYm2UgO">pic.twitter.com/hbYoYm2UgO</a>
&#8212; Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) <a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1138563456985128964?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 11, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Farming, like all other aspects of our economy, has increasingly become technologically advanced. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) took to Twitter to explain today&#8217;s farming to Rupar:
&#8220;This might be news to folks in New York or D.C., but in Iowa we know internet-connected farm equipment is critical for precision agriculture. And it&#8217;s one of the reasons I&#8217;m working to improve rural broadband speed and access.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
This might be news to folks in New York or D.C., but in Iowa we know internet-connected farm equipment is critical for precision agriculture. And it&#8217;s one of the reasons I&#8217;m working to improve rural broadband speed and access. <a href="https://t.co/iQPt2uWoHB">https://t.co/iQPt2uWoHB</a>
&#8212; Joni Ernst (@joniernst) <a href="https://twitter.com/joniernst/status/1138846752612802560?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 12, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, responded to Ernst with several examples he has seen of how technology helps farmers.
&#8220;America&#8217;s farms and ranches increasingly rely on technology. I&#8217;ve seen it for myself, from 4G LTE-connected soil probes to WiFi-managed fertilizer apps to GPS-driven combines to fiber-fed feedlots,&#8221; Pai tweeted.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
America&#8217;s farms and ranches increasingly rely on technology. I&#8217;ve seen it for myself, from 4G LTE-connected soil probes to WiFi-managed fertilizer apps to GPS-driven combines to fiber-fed feedlots. Thank you for your leadership on rural <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/broadband?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#broadband</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/SenJoniErnst?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SenJoniErnst</a>!
&#8212; Ajit Pai (@AjitPaiFCC) <a href="https://twitter.com/AjitPaiFCC/status/1138963537857011712?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 13, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
It does not appear Rupar has explained or walked back his comments.

Vox Writer Confused After Trump’s Tractor, Internet Claims. Iowa Senator Sets The Record Straight.

Iowa

On Monday, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki apologized to the LGBT community for not taking &#8220;more definitive action against conservative pundit Steven Crowder&#8217;s channel,&#8221; according to <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/10/18660473/youtube-lgbtq-susan-wojcicki-carlos-maza-steven-crowder">The Verge</a>, which is a publication of Vox Media.
Speaking at the Code conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, Wojcicki said, &#8220;I know that the decisions we made was very hurtful to the LGBTQ community and that wasn&#8217;t our intention at all. That was not our intention, and we were really sorry about that, and I do want to explain why we made the decision we did.&#8221;
Vox journalist Carlos Maza, who is gay, had pressured YouTube to punish Crowder for his remarks regarding Maza; ultimately YouTube decided not only to demonetize Crowder but also punish other creators in an incident dubbed the #VoxAdpocalypse.
When demonetizing Crowder, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48089/watch-steven-crowder-youtube-demonetizing-him-james-barrett">YouTube stated</a>:
<blockquote>
Even if a creator&#8217;s content doesn&#8217;t violate our community guidelines, we will take a look at the broader context and impact, and if their behavior is egregious and harms the broader community, we may take action. In the case of Crowder&#8217;s channel, a thorough review over the weekend found that individually, the flagged videos did not violate our Community Guidelines. However, in the subsequent days, we saw the widespread harm to the YouTube community resulting from the ongoing pattern of egregious behavior, took a deeper look, and made the decision to suspend monetization. In order to be considered for reinstatement, all relevant issues with the channel need to be addressed, including any videos that violate our policies, as well as things like offensive merchandise.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Maza <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48138/voxs-carlos-maza-whines-about-ted-cruz-defending-amanda-prestigiacomo">wasn&#8217;t satisfied</a> with YouTube demonetizing Crowder. He stated, &#8220;Conservatives have spent years arguing that even basic content moderation is a form of &#8216;censorship.&#8217; Their goal is to scare platforms like [YouTube] away from enforcing their hate speech policies. And it&#8217;s working, because YouTube doesn&#8217;t have the guts to protect its creators. You can&#8217;t give these people an inch. They won&#8217;t stop crying &#8216;liberal bias!&#8217; until they&#8217;re allowed to use hate speech with impunity. And that&#8217;s exactly what [YouTube] is allowing them to do.&#8221;
After Axios journalist Ina Fried pressed Wojcicki to expand on her apology to the LGBTQ community, Wojcicki responded:
<blockquote>
First of all, I&#8217;m really, personally very sorry. It was not our intent, YouTube has always been a home of so many LGBTQ creators, and that&#8217;s why it was so emotional. And that&#8217;s why I think this really &#8230; Even though it was a hard decision, it was harder that it came from us &#8212; because it was such an important home. And even though we made this decision &#8230; we have so many people from the LGBTQ community and we&#8217;ve always wanted to support the community openly in spite of this hard issue that we have right now.. As a company we really want to support this community. It&#8217;s just from a policy standpoint, we need to be consistent &#8212; look, if we took down that content, there would be so much other content that we would need to take down.&#8221;
We don&#8217;t want to just be knee-jerk; we need to think about it in a very thoughtful way; be able to speak with everyone; we&#8217;ll speak with people in the LGBTQ community, make sure that we&#8217;re incorporating that going forward in terms of how we think about harassment, and then make sure that we are implementing that in a fair and consistent way going forward.
</blockquote>
Video below:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
&#8220;Are you really sorry for anything that happened to the LGBTQ community? Or are you just sorry they were offended?&#8221;
Watch <a href="https://twitter.com/SusanWojcicki?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SusanWojcicki</a>&#8216;s response at <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CodeCon?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CodeCon</a>: <a href="https://t.co/5MqJxL8QVS">pic.twitter.com/5MqJxL8QVS</a>
&#8212; Recode (@Recode) <a href="https://twitter.com/Recode/status/1138231255445598208?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 10, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>

WATCH: YouTube CEO Apologizes To LGBTQ Community After #VoxAdpocalypse

Censorship

Steven Crowder

YouTube

The &#8220;woke&#8221; writers of Vox want to unionize, but the apparently &#8220;woke for thee, but not for me&#8221; leaders of the company were not completely on board until recently.
On Thursday, Vox senior correspondent Dylan Matthews urged Twitter users not to click on links from the media outlet because they may be scheduled by &#8220;folks out of unit&#8221; (read: scabs) while employees walked out to protest their contract.
&#8220;I did not schedule this tweet of my article,&#8221; Matthews said of an @voxdotcom tweet. &#8220;Please do not click links from the tweets management is forcing folks out of unit to do while we walk out.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
I did not schedule this tweet of my article. Please do not click links from the tweets management is forcing folks out of unit to do while we walk out <a href="https://t.co/NhkyeJLLAB">https://t.co/NhkyeJLLAB</a>
&#8212; Dylan Matthews (@dylanmatt) <a href="https://twitter.com/dylanmatt/status/1136674462911422465?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Jim Geraghty, of National Review, jumped on Matthews&#8217; tweet, jokingly telling others not to click on Vox links.
<blockquote>
HEAR THAT, EVERYBODY! DO NOT CLICK ON VOX LINKS&#8230;
IN FACT, DON&#8217;T CLICK ON VOX LINKS INDEFINITELY UNTIL EVERYONE IS ABSOLUTELY SURE
</blockquote>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
HEAR THAT, EVERYBODY! DO NOT CLICK ON VOX LINKS&#8230;
IN FACT, DON&#8217;T CLICK ON VOX LINKS INDEFINITELY UNTIL EVERYONE IS ABSOLUTELY SURE <a href="https://t.co/Rm0eQvdPyZ">https://t.co/Rm0eQvdPyZ</a>
&#8212; Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) <a href="https://twitter.com/jimgeraghty/status/1136683318743879683?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2019</a></blockquote>
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In comments, Geraghty continued to mock Matthews and Vox, suggesting &#8220;the only way to help Vox unionized staff is to NOT click on their site.&#8221;
&#8220;I will not click on links to Vox for as long as it takes until management gives them everything they could ever want and more,&#8221; Geraghty added.
What Vox employees wanted, according <a href="https://twitter.com/vox_union/status/1136657852985163776">a tweet</a> from their official union account, was, in part:
<blockquote>
&#8211; competitive wage scales
&#8211; strong guaranteed raises
&#8211; better severance
&#8211; subcontracting work
</blockquote>
It is unclear what &#8220;strong, guaranteed raises&#8221; actually meant.
Employees refused to work on Thursday until their demands were met. It appears many of their demands were met, according to a follow-up tweet on Friday.
<blockquote>
Things the &#8294;@vox_union&#8297; has:
&#8211; a contract
-guaranteed raises
&#8211; salary minimums
-strong severance
&#8211; a lot of good friends
&#8211; as of now: beers
</blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Things the &#8294;<a href="https://twitter.com/vox_union?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@vox_union</a>&#8297; has:
&#8211; a contract 
-guaranteed raises 
&#8211; salary minimums 
-strong severance 
&#8211; a lot of good friends 
&#8211; as of now: beers <a href="https://t.co/E7hGl0KKro">pic.twitter.com/E7hGl0KKro</a>
&#8212; Alex Kirshner (@alex_kirshner) <a href="https://twitter.com/alex_kirshner/status/1137114215070797824?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 7, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Vox employees had been working to unionize for a year, and four months ago, the company responded by seemingly shifting its hiring away from full-time employees to contractors and freelancers. A <a href="https://media.thinknum.com/articles/vox-media-freelance-contract-hiring/">report</a> from Thinknum showed that hiring at Vox was increasing, but the increase came from non-employee hires.
Anna Merriman, an editor at Vox affiliate Curbed Philly, tweeted just how important Vox employees think their union efforts were.
&#8220;Halfway through an hour-long union meeting yesterday, it hit me: this was not just a fight for workers&#8217; rights/fair pay at Vox, but a fight for journalism across the board,&#8221; she tweeted. &#8220;If we can set a standard for journalists, if we can stand up and say we will not buckle under pressure and if we can show management across the board that we&#8217;re ready to fight for the pay and benefits that we deserve, this profession may just live on after all.&#8221;
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
&#8230;And if we can show management across the board that we&#8217;re ready to fight for the pay and benefits that we deserve, this profession may just live on after all.
&#8212; Anna Merriman (@Anna_Merriman) <a href="https://twitter.com/Anna_Merriman/status/1137192397446819840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 8, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>

Vox Writer Asked People Not To Click On Vox Links From Twitter During Union Walkout

On Thursday&#8217;s episode of &#8220;The Michael Knowles Show,&#8221; Knowles argues that Vox Media host Carlos Maza&#8217;s attempt to get comedian Steven Crowder demonetized and removed from the video-sharing website YouTube was not a simple case of hurt feelings, but a coordinated attack on conservative content creators. Video and partial transcript below.
It&#8217;s a twofold political stunt. Why did Carlos Maza do this now? He said that Crowder has been calling him a &#8220;lispy queer&#8221; for years. Maza has been calling himself a &#8220;queer&#8221; for years. Why right now? Well, it&#8217;s because this is Pride month. Carlos Maza launched this whole crusade on May 30th, two days before the launch of Pride Month. This was not an exasperated emotional reaction to harassment. This was a highly calculated premeditated attempt to censor conservatives on YouTube and other social media which are, by the way, the largest public squares in the entire world. Certainly, in the country but in the entire world as well. This was a highly calculated attempt by a highly calculating political operative named Carlos Maza to sensor conservatives from the public square.
It has mostly worked. He&#8217;s a whiny un-American authoritarian, but Carlos Maza is pretty effective. But it&#8217;s not just launched at the beginning of Pride Month, it&#8217;s launched at the beginning of the 2020 cycle. It&#8217;s 2019, the elections are underway and now YouTube is going to mobilize to help Democrats unfairly. The Left complains about Citizens United, how that Supreme Court decision upheld the corporation&#8217;s right to donate to political campaigns. They said it was awful and they said corporations aren&#8217;t people, corporations can&#8217;t donate.
Then what is this? What this is, is just one giant completely unregulated corporate donation to Democrats. They&#8217;re admitting it. They say they&#8217;re going to censor conservatives and they&#8217;re going to help Democrats. At least after Citizens United, other corporations have to disclose their political contributions, but not YouTube. YouTube doesn&#8217;t have to disclose this. It&#8217;s a huge in-kind contribution for Dems during a very contentious election year.
So how should conservatives respond? This reopens the same debate between conservatism and classical liberalism or conservative liberalism that we have been talking about for the past two weeks. Some libertarian classical liberal types insist that the government should take no action. They say YouTube is a private company, and they can kick off whoever they want. It&#8217;s not the government, no big deal. That&#8217;s one idea. They&#8217;re uncomfortable with the government stepping in to regulate social media.
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe loading="lazy" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/K_a3jlBzpxw?start=661" width="560"></iframe></div>
Now the less classical liberal, more conservative minded people, say absolutely the government should prevent this mass censorship on a national and global scale of conservative ideas. So which is it? Should we say hands off, YouTube can do whatever they want, or should we get involved?
This is based on a faulty premise. This is based on the premise that the government, right now, doesn&#8217;t already have its finger on the scales. It does. The government is already giving these corporations, like YouTube, unfair protection. The law in this country is supposed to treat publishers and platforms differently. Right now, however, the law is treating social media companies like publishers when it suits them; and like platforms when it suits them otherwise.
In some cases, it&#8217;s one, in some cases it&#8217;s the other. This is not exactly on the question of censorship. It&#8217;s on the question of what these companies are. Here at The Daily Wire, we have no obligation to publish views that we disagree with. We do because all of the writers and the hosts all disagree with each other all the time, but we don&#8217;t publish every single opinion in the world. We&#8217;re not a left-wing news site, we&#8217;re a conservative news site. We don&#8217;t need to worry about charges of censorship because we&#8217;re a publisher. We decide what we want to publish. We pick which stories to run. But since we&#8217;re a publisher, we have to worry about a lot of other things, such as copyright infringement, defamation, libel, IP theft, fair use, all these different things that YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter all the other social media companies don&#8217;t have to worry about because they say that they are platforms, not publishers &#8212; sometimes. They say they&#8217;re just an internet platform, which gives them a whole lot of government help, a whole lot of protections.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 says, &#8220;no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as a publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.&#8221; What&#8217;s the purpose of that? It&#8217;s so that the Internet could grow, and this has led to incredible growth. By protecting tech companies from copyright and other publisher issues, it allowed them not to get totally bogged down and stifled as the Internet was growing.
It&#8217;s created billionaires, it&#8217;s created billion dollar corporations. It has allowed the Internet to flourish. Now those platforms are abusing that protection. The protection that was made to allow the Internet to grow to allow these companies to exist, they are now abusing that protection and behaving as publishers. Obviously, they&#8217;re choosing what content they want on the platform what content they don&#8217;t. Not just YouTube, it&#8217;s all of big tech trying to have it both ways.
<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-michael-knowles-show/id1266577963?mt=2">Listen to &#8220;The Michael Knowles Show&#8221; on iTunes.</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/show/michael-knowles-show">Subscribe to watch &#8220;The Michael Knowles Show&#8221; on-demand.</a>

KNOWLES: Vox Media’s Attack On Steven Crowder Was A Strategic Move; Here’s How Conservatives Should Respond

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